I’m now on my fourth Liteon now.Having just received a 5002 to replace a jittery 5005.Over the past few weeks I’ve also trialed other brands…Goodmans…wouldn’t play a lot of my Liteon recorded discs,tuner was crap and an awkward complicated menu system.ALBA (just for a laugh) brilliant menu system,…tuner…well,i don’t think they’d remembered to put one in.Like sitting in a valley with a loop aerial on top…So,to put me out of my misery,i pursuade ‘her indoors’ that the new PANASONIC ES10 will put an end to all this aggro…This machine can record to RAM discs,dvd-r and dvd-rw and also dvd+r(but not dvd+rw).It has to be said this is a brilliant machine.Perfect recordings,great features,loads of inputs.Good quality build…But the recordings it made on dvd would not play very well on other machines and didn’t recognize a lot of my earlier Liteon recorded discs…(later firmware finalized ones,it would)…BUT, NO scart/rca throughput when it was switched off!.(not in the one i received anyway)…So until these different companies can come up with a completely compatable format and understand the basics of what people need,there will be much gnashing of teeth and plenty of unimpressed spouses who didn’t think you needed one of these things in the first place…Seriously though,Liteon are very close to having a good competitive range of machines for not too high a price (and it can be hacked)If the machine I received in May was made last August then they might be building a new range now. …I’m going to watch my jitter now.

People are quick to bemoan the shortcomings of the Liteon’s and start quoting others, my reply is search through forums and find a machine that doesn’t have issues.
On a sheer value basis these units are tops.